Your team is already using AI. Nobody is in control of it.
Some of your people are genuinely good at this now. The same tools are also taking client data in twenty directions at once, with no shared method and no one watching the boundary. Capability has climbed; control has not kept pace. Readiness is the discipline of moving both together, and we measure it the way NASA decides a technology is safe to fly: a five-level model (the AI Readiness Level, or ARL) that takes your team up one stage at a time, with the governance climbing in step with the capability. Online by default, and built to be safe before it is scaled.
Not sure where to start?
A short call, no charge and no pitch. We look at where your team is using AI today, where the obvious exposure sits, and what your first move would be. You leave with a clearer head whether or not we ever work together. If it makes sense to go further, we will talk about the half-day discovery. If it does not, no harm done.
20 minutes. Online. No obligation.
We place your team on the five-level readiness ladder, so you leave knowing your number.
We name the one or two areas where your data is most exposed right now
You get a straight answer on your first step, and on whether the discovery is even worth it for you.
Not ready for the call? Take the two-minute assessment and get your own number first.
The gap isn't awareness. It is readiness.
1. Your people have tried AI. Some are good at it, most have drifted, and nobody is sure what is safe to put into which tool.
2. The same task gets done five different ways by five different people, because there is no shared method and no standard.
3. You suspect confidential information is going into AI tools, and you could not say what, or how much, or where it ends up.
4. You wrote a policy, or you mean to. Either way, nobody is enforcing it at the point where the work actually happens.
5. You know there are hours to be won back across the team. You just do not have anyone to come in and show your people exactly how, safely.
Why the score is a standard, not an opinion
The number holds up in front of a board
An AI readiness score is only worth having if two people looking at the same evidence reach the same number. That is the discipline we borrowed from NASA. Every level has a short list of concrete conditions that must all be true, and each one needs an artefact to show for it: the shared prompt, the documented workflow, the policy with proof it circulated, the log that shows the control actually fired. An assessor checks whether the conditions are met, not how confident the room feels.So your level is not a verdict on how clever your team is, and it is not our opinion of you. It is a reading anyone with the rubric would land on. That is what lets you take it upstairs, put it in a board paper, and stand behind it. It is also why the number usually comes in a notch or two below where people assumed: assumption is generous, evidence is not.
We measure readiness, then we move you up it
The idea: the AI Readiness Model - (ARL)
NASA never flies a technology because someone is excited about it. It moves through readiness levels, from an idea on a bench to a system proven in the real world, and nothing advances a stage until that stage is earned.We adapted that discipline into a five-level model for the safe use of AI in your business. We call this the AI readiness level or (ARL). We find the level your team is honestly at today, usually a notch or two below where people assume, then move you up it, one area of the business at a time.
The point is simple. You do not get to bank capability you cannot keep safe. Your readiness level is set by whichever is lower, what your team can do, or how well you control it. We climb both together.
"We draw on NASA's Technology Readiness Levels as our methodology. We are inspired by their approach, not certified by them."
Free assessment band
Find your own level in two minutes. Free.
No email wall, no sales call, no catch. Eight questions, two minutes, and you get your own AI readiness level: where you personally sit on the five-level ladder, and what the next level up looks like.Most people come out a level or two below where they assumed they were. I think that gap is worth knowing, and worth showing to the person who can actually act on it. When you finish, you can send your result straight up to whoever runs the business, with the context already written for you.
See the whole team, not just yourself
The individual assessment gives one person their number. The organisational scan gives you the spread.It is free, and it only starts when the person who can make a decision asks for it. Your team each take the same two-minute read, and each person also says which seat they sit in: leader, manager, or contributor. We aggregate the results into one picture, and we score each function by its floor rather than its average. If three of four operators read a 2, the function is a 2, and a leader's self-scored 3 is recorded as the gap, not averaged away.That gap, sorted by role, is the finding. More often than not it reads the same way: leadership scores the business a level or two above the people actually doing the work. The point of the scan is not to mark anyone's homework. It is intelligence about your own business that you cannot get any other way, and you keep it whether or not we ever work together.
How it works
Five steps, and you can stop at any one of them still better off than you started. The score sets the route. It is not a fixed staircase everyone climbs from the bottom; where your team lands decides which step is the honest next one.
Get your number. Two minutes, free. Your own readiness level, and a result you can pass upward.
Scan the team. Free, once a decision-maker asks. The spread between the level leadership assumes and the level the floor actually runs at, split by role.
Win the first level. Take one real workflow and turn a self-claimed level into an audited one. For a team at 1 or 2 that means reaching a governed ARL 3; for a team already claiming a 3 it proves the level holds and exposes what is capping it, usually control. Fixed price, about two weeks, done as a team.
Map the whole business. The £1,950 discovery: the full picture costed and sequenced, where data is leaking, and the order to climb in.
Make it stick. The twelve-month programme installs AI properly, one area at a time, and the quarterly re-rating holds the level you reach.
The order is not fixed. A team at ARL 1 or 2 usually banks a first level before the full discovery; a team already governed in parts often goes discovery-first. The free review call sets the route.
The full picture: the AI Readiness Discovery
Some buyers want the whole business mapped before they commit to a single workflow. That is what the discovery is for. A focused half-day that turns "we should sort out AI" into a costed, sequenced plan.
Map where your team's time goes and score your current AI use against the readiness ladder.
Audit where confidential data is actually flowing into AI tools, and flag the exposures that matter.
Identify the two or three areas where AI will give you the most back, fastest.
Build your roadmap: your level today, your target level, and the sequence to get there.
You Keep
Delivered by Rob, a certified AI Governance Practitioner under LOCS:23. Online by default, or in person for a premium.
Your readiness level, scored, with the evidence behind it.
A written exposure map and a prioritised action plan you can act on with or without us.
A clear view of what the twelve-month programme would cover for your business, with no obligation to take it.
Our guarantee: if you finish the discovery without a clear picture of where you stand and a plan you can act on, we refund it in full. The risk is ours, not yours.
Your first level, in about two weeks
Twelve months is the right way to install AI across a whole business. It is the wrong thing to ask of a team that has not yet seen the model work. So we do not.We take one workflow that is eating your team's time, the customer reply, the invoice run, the document summary, and we get it to a governed ARL 3 together. Fixed price. About two weeks. Done as a team, so the capability stays with your people and the controls are built in from the first day rather than bolted on later.It is priced to the work, and it counts as a wedge against the full programme if you go on. You are not buying a description of your problem. You are banking a level.
What the programme installs
Once the first level has proven the model in your own business, the programme is how you climb the rest. We install AI properly across the business, one area at a time, through AI Installed. You renew into the next level rather than signing up for a year on faith.What runs each month: a group session led by people who build and govern AI systems for a living, a written deep-dive you keep, ready-to-deploy templates, and guest specialists across finance, sales, legal and compliance, and measurement. Online by default.
The programme: level by level to ARL 4 and 5
The curriculum: AI Installed. Twelve areas of your business over twelve months, from your first real workflow to finance, customer operations, sales, security, and team-wide governance. Each one leaves you with something running that was not running before. A written deep-dive every month, yours to keep.
The live layer. One monthly group session, run by practitioners who build and govern AI systems for a living. Live demos, real teardowns of your challenges, and direct questions answered. Practitioner access, not a webinar.
The specialists. Four sessions bring in a domain expert who uses AI in their field every day: an accountant for finance, a sales leader for selling, a legal and compliance professional for governance, and a data specialist for measurement. People with scars, not slides.
The governance starter pack. A templated internal AI policy, data boundaries, and the controls your business can actually adopt, so the policy lives in the workflows rather than on a wall. This is the part that protects everything else.
Programme scope and price are tailored to your team size and set out in your discovery. There is no standard sticker, because a forty-person firm and a three-hundred-person firm are not the same job.
Who is this for?
You lead a team of roughly 30 to 400 people and you can authorise a business decision.
Your people are already using AI, and you want them doing it consistently and safely rather than freelancing.
You handle client or sensitive data, and the exposure keeps you up slightly at night.
You would rather bring in someone who governs AI for regulated businesses than someone who writes posts about it.
This is not for you if:
You want it all built and run for you. This installs capability in your team, it is not done-for-you outsourcing.
Nobody at your business has touched AI yet. A little baseline use helps, because we move at pace.
You are after generic tips. We deal in specific, governed implementation.
Proof and the people
Who is behind it
"Rob and Steve have totally changed the way I think about AI in business. I have come to learn that transformation happens when AI stops being a personal tool and starts becoming your company's operating system."
CEO, regional UK law firm"Would 100% recommend. The value offered here dwarfs the fee."
Mark Rothwell-Brooks, CEO, VerityX
The Practice Labs is led by two founders with complementary experience.Rob builds the AI governance infrastructure used by regulated enterprises at Contextul, working with CISOs, legal teams, and compliance officers to secure AI at the technical layer. He is a certified AI Governance Practitioner under LOCS:23, the ICO-approved certification scheme under Article 42 of the UK GDPR. So the data-protection side of this is not a brochure claim, it is the day job.Steve is the training and enablement half of the partnership. He has spent his career in large enterprises in engineering, finance and telecoms, turning complex systems into something ordinary teams can actually use day to day, without needing a manual or an engineer on hand. That is the job here too: taking AI from something a few people dabble with to something a whole team runs confidently, consistently, and safely.Between them, they cover the full span: strategy, security, training, and the hands-on implementation that makes it stick. This is what they do professionally, with real businesses, every day.
Before you decide.
How does this work with procurement?
The discovery is a simple £1,950 card payment through Stripe, which sits below most procurement thresholds and is easy to expense. The twelve-month programme is contracted and invoiced on a purchase order with normal payment terms, and we can split it quarterly if that suits your budget cycle.
Is our data safe in this process?
That is the whole point of the business. We help you reduce AI data exposure, so we are careful with yours. The discovery looks at where data is flowing, and nothing sensitive needs to leave your control for us to do it. Governance is led by a certified AI Governance Practitioner.
What if we score at Level 1 or 2?
Most teams do, and it is not a failing. The tools arrived faster than anyone could govern them. Knowing your real level is the first useful thing that happens, because you cannot close a gap you have never measured.
We are not very technical, will we keep up?
This is built for business teams, not engineers. If your people can use email and a spreadsheet, they can implement what we cover. The technical depth sits with us.
Do you have to come on-site?
No. Everything runs online by default, which keeps it efficient and affordable. On-site days are available as a premium for teams that want hands-on, in-person delivery.
What does the discovery commit us to?
Nothing. It stands on its own and is useful whether or not you go further. If you do continue to the programme, the discovery has already done the groundwork.
Is there an individual option?
Yes, start with the free assessment. It is built for one person to take and gives you your own readiness level in two minutes. Solo owners and single users can go further through The Practice Labs for individuals; teams use that same individual result as the thing they forward to whoever makes the call.
Stop hoping. Start with your number.
Final call to action
Your team is using AI whether you have a plan for it or not. The only real question is whether anyone can name the level you are operating at, and what it would take to move up safely.Start with your own number - it takes two minutes and costs nothing. If it lands above your pay grade, send it up: the people who can act on it should see it too. A half-day discovery answers both.
Take the free assessment first
Secured via Stripe. Limited discovery slots each month
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